the two thousand poor creatures who are lodged in the infirmary for
the aged, was seated on a corner-stone, and seemed to have
concentrated all his intelligence on an operation well known to these
pensioners, which consists in drying their snuffy pocket-handkerchiefs
in the sun, perhaps to save washing them. This old man had an
attractive countenance. He was dressed in a reddish cloth wrapper-coat
which the work-house affords to its inmates, a sort of horrible
livery.

"I say, Derville," said Godeschal to his traveling companion, "look at
that old fellow. Isn't he like those grotesque carved figures we get
from Germany? And it is alive, perhaps it is happy."

Derville looked at the poor man through his eyeglass, and with a
little exclamation of surprise he said:

"That old man, my dear fellow, is a whole poem, or, as the romantics
say, a drama.--Did you ever meet the Comtesse Ferraud?"

"Yes; she is a clever woman, and agreeable; but rather too pious,"
said Godeschal.

"That old Bicetre pauper is her lawful husband, Comte Chabert, the old
Colonel. She has had him sent here, no doubt. And if he is in this
workhouse instead of living in a mansion, it is solely because he
reminded the pretty Countess that he had taken her, like a hackney
cab, on the street. I can remember now the tiger's glare she shot at
him at that moment."

This opening having excited Godeschal's curiosity, Derville related